Fate of Stateless Rohingya Muslims Is in Antagonistic Hands

Fate of Stateless Rohingya Muslims Is in Antagonistic Hands
3, 2017
SHAH PORIR DWIP, Bangladesh — A skinny finger of water separates Bangladesh from Myanmar,
and the other night a group of men sat on the Bangladeshi side, peering into the darkness, wondering what was left for them.
Many people in Myanmar insist the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for hundreds of years.
Facing international pressure to host the refugees and some domestic pressure to push them out, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has said
that her country would continue to help the refugees on humanitarian grounds but that Myanmar must "take their nationals back." She has ordered the army to seal off roads around the camps to make sure Rohingya do not start migrating to towns.
If the British had drawn the colonial border between what is now Myanmar
and Bangladesh a little farther east and south, as Rohingya leaders had pleaded for after World War II, the biggest Rohingya areas would have been become part of Bangladesh.
I’m talking about 7-year-olds who have witnessed their parents get their throats slit who are standing in bare feet on the border right now, asking: ‘What’s going to happen to me?’" Bangladesh
and Myanmar have held rounds of talks about what to do with the refugees, without any Rohingya representatives present.
Officials from Bangladesh, a very crowded country, insist that Myanmar must take the Rohingya back.